Open Lines: Is Social Media A Kind Of Telepathy?

Welcome to Open Lines, where I receive stories and questions about paranormal topics from readers just like you. Think of it as a stranger version of Dear Abby. This stuff comes to me either as emails, messages on social media, or even the occasional search query I randomly spot in my analytics.

Now that’s an interesting question. Telepathy is the ability to communicate thoughts through “means other than the known senses.” Think of it like beaming a thought or idea in your mind straight into the mind of another person, and vice versa.

In an odd way, I do kind of see writing as a form of telepathy – in his autobiographical “how to” On Writing, published way, way back in the year 2000, Stephen King described writing as “Telepathy, of course.”

We’re transferring ideas from one another, sometimes across the entire planet, without speaking or hearing a single word. I guess that’s something. On the other hand, we are seeing it — that’s using our senses — but let’s not get hung up on the particulars, here.

There’s more to it than that, anyway, especially in the context of the Internet, technology, and what the future may hold.

So, while today’s social media might not exactly be telepathy in a literal sense, in the future, it just might.

Now, I’m not so sure I’ll want anything to do with that – reading some of the stuff I see on Twitter or Facebook is good enough for me, I don’t need it beamed directly into my brain. But, if it happens, it’ll be an interesting development, no doubt.